Record-company magnates don't like digital audio tape and other
digital media that can make perfect copies of musical recordings,
because they fear customers will copy music themselves and stop buying
pre-recorded music.

Threatening lawsuits, record companies coerced the major
manufacturers into supporting a new law recently passed by Congress
that taxes each unit and each tape or recordable disc sold to
consumers. The tax funds are handed out to various participants in the
music industry. The law also requires manufacturers to cripple
hardware so that consumers cannot make a copy of a copy of a
pre-recorded piece.

The stated purpose of the law is to "compensate" musicians for home
copying. But the law diverts 57 percent of the funds to record
companies and music publishers, leaving less than half for the people
who participate in the creative process. Most of the remaining funds
will go to musical superstars and thus do little to encourage or
assist musical creativity.

Meanwhile, users are denied the full power of digital technology:
easier copying and changing of information.

Here is a proposal for a different system for taxing digital
copying - one designed to support music rather than cater to vested
interests:

Make no restrictions on the functioning of digital copying equipment.

Use a survey system to measure the extent of copying of each musical
piece.

Collect funds with a tax on machines and media, as the current law does.

Distribute these funds entirely to the people who create music.

Adjust each contributor's share so that it increases more slowly
per copy as it gets larger. This allows the collected funds to be
spread more widely to support a larger number of musicians.

What is the Purpose of Copyright?

The record industry presents its law as a way to "compensate"
musicians, assuming that they are entitled to be paid for any copy
made. As copyright owners, they pretend that copyright is an
entitlement - a natural right to restrict the public use of
information.

The US legal system fundamentally rejects this view.

The stated purpose of copyright, according to the Constitution, is
to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts." Progress in
music means new and varied music - a public good, not a private one.
Copyright holders may benefit from copyright law, but that is not its
purpose.

Yet laymen and politicians often believe that copyright is an
entitlement. This idea, mistaking a means for an end, is easily abused
by those with vested interests in extension of copyright or analogous
measures.

Promoting progress in the arts does not inherently justify any
particular sort of copyright, or even that copyright should exist at
all. Copyright is justified only if it is an advantageous bargain for
the public - if the benefit of additional progress exceeds the burden
of the restrictions of copyright.

This cost-benefit comparison depends partly on facts (how a
particular policy affects musical activity and music users) and partly
on our society's value judgments about those facts.

Let's start with a general truth. The law of diminishing returns, a
principle of economics, states that additional increments of efforts
or funds spent on a given goal eventually produce smaller and smaller
increments of results. When applied to the activities of musicians,
the law of diminishing returns tells us that successive increases in
the income of the music industry will diminish the amount of
creativity in music.

Here's an analogy. Adding one lane to a congested road in a city
might increase the average traffic speed by fifteen miles an hour.
Adding another lane to the same road will not make an equal
improvement; it may make no difference if the traffic jams are already
gone. Yet each additional lane will cause greater disruption as more
buildings must be torn down.

The diminishing returns principle is the first reason to reject the
idea that any use of music "should" be covered by copyright. Extending
copyright can only "promote progress" up to a certain point; further
extensions are a pointless giveaway. There is no public interest in
giving owners control of every possible aspect of the use of music or
a financial stake in every possible aftermarket.

Richard Stallman (rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu) is the president of the Free Software Foundation, the chief GNUisance of the GNU project and a MacArthur Foundation fellow. Copyright 1993, Richard Stallman. Unlimited verbatim copying of this piece permitted in any medium.